SINGAPORE — Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) announcement that it will offer local heritage cuisine from next month to September has brought great cheer to many Singaporean travellers. As part of its SG50 celebrations, dishes such as Nyonya fish curry, buah keluak, Hokkien prawn mee soup, kong bak pau and even gula melaka ice cream await passengers on most flights departing from Singapore as well as at the airlines’ lounges in Changi Airport.

But it was no easy feat to create these flavours of home. Everything had to be rethought and tweaked to ensure that what you’re eating 35,000 feet in the air tastes as close as possible to the real deal.

“It’s not easy because Peranakan food is complex and labour-intensive. We’re (also) doing it on such a large scale and dealing with conditions such as air pressure and dryness,” explained chef and cookbook author Shermay Lee, who’s collaborating with SIA on the project. “To me, the biggest challenge is really the scalability of authenticity — it’s about ensuring that the food tastes like home, that the dishes will encapsulate grandma’s cooking.”

Lee spent four months working with the SIA staff and the kitchen crew of SATS Inflight Catering to ensure every dish was up to standard. During those four months, Lee and her team of 12 did six rounds of formal tastings and more than 10 rounds of audit before the final products were ready. Here’s what else we learnt from Lee and Singapore Airlines manager of inflight food and beverage services Hermann Freidanck.

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1. Salt and sugar portions were increased

The high pressure and low humidity when on a plane causes mucus in our nose to dry up, dulling our taste buds and our sense of smell by up to 40 per cent. SATS In-Flight Catering Centre has an air stimulation cabin that replicates the conditions of the plane for the testing of in-flight meals. Lee said she had to increase the sugar and salt content in the dishes by about 20 per cent to make up for that.

2. Forget about eating ngoh hiang on planes — for now

There were some dishes Lee had to drop because they simply wouldn’t work. “Anything fried such as ngoh hiang (spring rolls) wouldn’t hold up well at all,” she added.

3. Buah keluak is the most difficult dish to recreate

As expected, the much beloved dish of buah keluack posed the biggest challenge. Lee and her team debated on whether to keep the shells but decided against it (it would have been more cumbersome for passengers to eat). Instead, the paste from the buah keluack nut was cooked with the sauce and to counter the earthy flavour, sugar, salt and tamarind portions were adjusted accordingly.

4. Keropok has to be ‘flat’

Lounge passengers and those on business and first class will get to munch on addictive prawn and emping crackers. But even these underwent a lot of experimenta-tion. “They are fried in such a way that they are as flat as possible”. Why? They had to consider the space constraints of the aeroplane galleys and food trolleys.

5. Cooking methods were adjusted

While industrial cooking meant that many dishes are usually fried over a strong fire, it didn’t turn out well when they tried to do it. “The food became too smoky and had black bits,” Lee explained. Instead, most of the dishes were cooked in a pot over a lower temperature “just like how a Nyonya grandma would”.

6. Ingredients were not compromised

In Peranakan cooking, spices and ingredients can make a world of difference. Little things such as the size of your onions can affect the overall taste. So in creating dishes such as pork satay, only shallots or small red onions were used. “The big onions would have been too pungent,” said Lee. Likewise, spices such as cumin were dry-toasted to draw out the aroma. “I’m very happy that SIA is committed to doing these things to ensure the standard of the food,” said Lee.

7. You can only have the kong bak pau on the Singapore-to-Kuala Lumpur flights

The obvious reason is because the buns used for kong bak pau will dry up and harden on longer flights (you can always fill up on these if you find yourself in one of SIA’s airport lounges, though). It’s the same reason why Lee decided against an ice cream sandwich with rainbow-coloured bread. “We really wanted to but the bread wouldn’t hold up as well. We thought the wafers would lend a nice crisp to the ice cream too.”